Does this mean you will now give up on the idea that this was calculated by the Bush admin to discredit Wilson?

I considered the idea likely at the time! If it's absent of proof, why is it assumed I'm still holding the idea? That's swift-boat-logic.

If you would recall the discussions we actually had on the issue, it was about Rove's gaff.

Rove admitted he said too much, but he's okay from a legal standpoint (the law requires specific intent that's mighty difficult to prove). Libby took it further, and obstructed justice.

Basically, now that we're pretty sure that the prime first leak was Armitage, it makes it hilarious (and still odd) that Libby would lie to obstruct justice, and end up getting ensnared in perfectly useless duplicity that wasn't even protecting the administration.

o'reilly has weighed in, of course, claiming that the left has done terrible damage to the country by attacking everyone but armitage. he even says:

Quote:

Enterprises like Air America and MSNBC flat out accused the Bush administration, and especially Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, of breaking the law by leaking Plame's name.

...conveniently failing to note that libby has actually been indicted.

and do recall, ags - we've seen copies of cheney's marked-up copy of wilson's editorial. they may not be legally liable - but they sure weren't unhappy with a cia agent, working on weapons of mass destruction, being outed. in fact - did they make any outcry about the damage novak's column did to the work she was doing?....don't recall hearing any of that from the admin.

no, there was plenty of reason to see them as complicit. and armitage saying something first doesn't mean they weren't saying this as well._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

Joined: 10 Jul 2006Posts: 907Location: Studying somewhere. Or at least that's where I should be.

Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 5:48 pm Post subject:

Even when faced with direct evidence you continue to hold on....

I cannot convince you otherwise at this point. Armitage, without realizing that he actually ousted a covert agent, is responsible for the leak. The rest is speculation at this point._________________-Agamemnon.....but you can call me Jake.

P: They don't know we know they know we know. And Joey, you can't say anything!

Basically, now that we're pretty sure that the prime first leak was Armitage, it makes it hilarious (and still odd) that Libby would lie to obstruct justice, and end up getting ensnared in perfectly useless duplicity that wasn't even protecting the administration.

Lol!

Because it was as a result of Libby's inquiry that Armitage found out and he was covering his ass.

NYTimes wrote:

In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, Mr. Armitage disclosed casually to Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. at the end of an interview in his State Department office. Mr. Armitage knew that, the accounts continue, because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman.

Mr. Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Ms. Wilson after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libbyís inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus.

_________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

I cannot convince you otherwise at this point. Armitage, without realizing that he actually ousted a covert agent, is responsible for the leak. The rest is speculation at this point.

umm....have you forgotten that judith miller had notes that libby told her about plame at about the same time? did you miss were novak said he had heard it from more than one official?

and if it was all armitage, how did the special prosecuter manage to indict libby? he can't just do that because he wants to, you know - he had to present some evidence.

armitage may have been the first whose comment was reported (although he says he doesn't remember mentioning a name). that doesn't mean he was the _only_ person who mentioned her name to the press. cheney et al. were aware of who she was, and were unhappy with her husband._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

Joined: 10 Jul 2006Posts: 907Location: Studying somewhere. Or at least that's where I should be.

Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:13 pm Post subject:

mouse wrote:

Agamemnon wrote:

Even when faced with direct evidence you continue to hold on....

I cannot convince you otherwise at this point. Armitage, without realizing that he actually ousted a covert agent, is responsible for the leak. The rest is speculation at this point.

umm....have you forgotten that judith miller had notes that libby told her about plame at about the same time? did you miss were novak said he had heard it from more than one official?

and if it was all armitage, how did the special prosecuter manage to indict libby? he can't just do that because he wants to, you know - he had to present some evidence.

armitage may have been the first whose comment was reported (although he says he doesn't remember mentioning a name). that doesn't mean he was the _only_ person who mentioned her name to the press. cheney et al. were aware of who she was, and were unhappy with her husband.

See Dogen's point above._________________-Agamemnon.....but you can call me Jake.

P: They don't know we know they know we know. And Joey, you can't say anything!

Hmmm, this thread is pretty dead, hope noone minds if I hijack it for my own purposes.

BBC wrote:

US 'threatened to bomb' PakistanThe US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf has said.

General Musharraf said the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan's intelligence director.

"I think it was a very rude remark," Gen Musharraf told CBS television.

Pakistan agreed to side with the US, but Gen Musharraf said it did so based on his country's national interest.

"One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did," he said.

'Ludicrous' requests

The extracts from the CBS show 60 Minutes, which will run on Sunday, were released on the same day that the White House praised Pakistan for its co-operation in America's "war on terror".

Gen Musharraf is due to meet US President George W Bush at the White House on Friday.

The BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington says that Gen Musharraf was deliberately distancing himself from the White House in the face of intense pressure within Pakistan over his close ties to Washington.

He is also due to launch his autobiography next week and some analysts say the timing of the revelation may be an attempt to generate interest in the book.

The White House and US State Department declined to comment on the 60 Minutes interview.

The Pakistani president said that, following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the US made some "ludicrous" demands of Pakistan.

"The intelligence director told me that Mr Armitage said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age'," he said.

The US envoy also insisted that Pakistan suppress domestic expression of support for attacks on the United States, he said.

Mr Armitage also allegedly demanded that Pakistan allow the US to use its border posts as staging points for the war on Afghanistan.

Gen Musharraf did agree to open up Pakistani airspace to the US, as well as to share intelligence after 11 September.

American troops are not officially allowed to operate on Pakistani soil although they have launched air strikes from bases in Afghanistan.

In January, 18 local people were killed in a US raid targeting Al Qaeda number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri in a village in Bajaur Agency on the border with Afghanistan.

Five foreigners were also killed in the raid, Gen Musharraf said at the time, amid anger about the attack.

Pakistan's support was considered crucial in the defeat of Afghanistan's Taleban government, which Pakistan had helped to bring to power.

President Musharraf has proved a loyal ally though many now will question the means used to extract the co-operation, says the BBC's Jonathan Beale.

Cowboy politics at it's finest!_________________bi-chromaticism is the extraordinary belief that there exists only two options
each polar opposite to each other
where one is completely superior to the other.

Joined: 10 Jul 2006Posts: 907Location: Studying somewhere. Or at least that's where I should be.

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:21 am Post subject:

Be careful of what you attribute to whom:

AP wrote:

Bush 'taken aback' by Musharraf comment

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
25 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday he was "taken aback" by a purported U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if it did not cooperate in the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He praised Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for being one of the first foreign leaders to come out after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to stand with the U.S. to "help root out an enemy."

At a joint White House news conference, Musharraf said a peace treaty between his government and tribes along the Pakistan- Afghanistan border is not meant to support the Taliban.

He said news reports had mischaracterized the deals. "The deal is not at all with the Taliban. This deal is against the Taliban. This deal is with the tribal elders," Musharraf said.

Said Bush: "I believe him."

He said that Musharraf had looked him in the eye and vowed that "the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people and that there won't be a Taliban and there won't be al-Aqaida (in Pakistan)."

In an interview to air Sunday on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" program, Musharraf said that after the attacks, Richard Armitage, then deputy secretary of state, told Pakistan's intelligence director that the United States would bomb his country if it didn't help fight terrorists.

He said that Armitage had told him, "Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age."

Armitage has disputed the language attributed to him but did not deny the message was a strong one.

The former senior U.S. official told Associated Press Radio on Friday: "There was no military threat and I was not authorized to do so."

"It did not happen," Armitage said.

He said he had a State Department cable of his conversation with the intelligence chief read to him Friday "and there was, in no way, that threat."

"It was a strong, straightforward conversation," Armitage said. He said he intended to communicate to the Pakistani official the feelings of Americans about being attacked.

Armitage said he called on Musharraf on Thursday and had trust in him.

Asked about the report, Bush said, "The first I heard of this is when I read it in the newspaper. I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words."

For his part, Musharraf declined to comment and cited a contract agreement with a publisher on an upcoming book. However, he told CBS the Stone Age warning "was a very rude remark."

Bush has repeatedly praised Pakistan for arresting hundreds of al-Qaida operatives inside its borders. Pakistan is the world's second-biggest Islamic country, with a population of 160 million.

But the United States has also urged Pakistan to do more to stop militants from crossing from its tribal regions into Afghanistan, where Taliban-fanned violence has reached its deadliest proportions since the American-led invasion that toppled the hard-line regime.

Pakistan earlier this month signed a truce with tribal figures. Afghanistan has protested that the militants are linked to the Taliban, the militant Islamic group that once ruled Afghanistan until driven from power in 2001.

But both Bush and Musharraf shrugged off such links and said they were united in pursuing terrorists, especially Osama bin Laden.

"When we find Osama bin Laden, he will be brought to justice. We are on the hunt together," Bush said.

Musharraf echoed him. "We are in the hunt together against these people," the Pakistani leader said.

Bush will have talks Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Then, he'll have a three-way sitdown with both leaders at the White House on Wednesday.

Bush must work to placate the concerns of Pakistan, a chief ally in the war on terror, as well as the struggling democratic government in Afghanistan, which is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban in late 2001.

Meanwhile, Musharraf reported progress toward resolving the dispute between India and Pakistan over the shared Himalayan region of Kashmir. The Pakistani leader cited progress in recent talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"We are moving on the Kashmir dispute," Musharraf said.

Bush seemed pleased. "I'm impressed by this president's will to get something done in Kashmir," he said.

Pressed on how the U.S. might help, Bush said: "The Kashmir issue will be solved when two leaders decide to solve it, and we want to help. The United States can't force nations to reach an agreement just because we want there to be an agreement."

Earlier Friday, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said he didn't know the specifics of what Armitage might have said to the Pakistanis.

"But we have made very clear that we went straight to President Musharraf in the days after 9/11 and said it's time to make a choice: Are you going to side with the civilized world or are you going to side with the Taliban and al-Qaida," Bartlett told CBS' "The Early Show."

White House press secretary Tony Snow that he didn't know what Armitage said. Armitage no longer is in the administration.

"Mr. Armitage has said that he made no such representations," Snow said. "I don't know. This could have been a classic failure to communicate. I just don't know."

"U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats," Snow said. "U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf, `We need you to make a choice'."

In his meeting with Musharraf, Bush played middle man in a thorny foreign policy problem that has bubbled up between Islamabad and Afghanistan ó two U.S. allies in the war on terrorism who accuse each other of not doing enough to crack down on extremists.

Afghan officials have alleged repeatedly that Taliban militants are hiding out in neighboring Pakistan and launching attacks across the border into Afghanistan. Pakistan, which has deployed 80,000 troops along the border, rejects the accusation and says it's doing all it can to battle extremists.

During Musharraf's visit, human rights activists are asking Bush to press Musharraf to restore civilian rule in Pakistan, end discrimination of women, and stop using torture and arbitrary detention in counterterrorism operations. Musharraf seized power in a 1999 coup. Instead of giving up his military uniform in 2004 as promised, he changed the constitution so he could hold both his army post and the presidency until 2007.

_________________-Agamemnon.....but you can call me Jake.

P: They don't know we know they know we know. And Joey, you can't say anything!

I'd like more info on Armitage. Novak depicts him as the "foremost internal skeptic of the administrationís war policy," which gives me pause. Novak further suggests he was quite explicit in his information and suggesting it would be good for Novak's column, and yet the only thing to gain from this is punishing another war critic (as it had no other effect than to ruin Valerie Plame's career, shut down a CIA undercover operation, put us at greater danger and inhibit our ability to monitor Iran's nuclear program - none things one would assume the admin or a war critic might want).

Now, Armitage (a critic of Bush/Cheney Co. who worked under Colin Powell, who is also now a war critic) is accused of threatening to blast Afghanistan into the Stone Age. Naturally, of course, he denies it.

To say the least, I think we're getting less than the whole story._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman